Win98SE: Audio files play distorted. What is up?

[Askitis]

Every single sound file, from MP3s to WAVs (including the Windows Sounds) are suddenly unrecognizable.

They all play as if there is an encryption algorythm distorting them.

Has anyone ever experienced this before.
Any ideas of what might be causing it?

There are only three(3) things that I did differently in the last 24 hours that could have triggered this:
1. Bought a new CD and tried to add two of the songs in my private PC collection. Not succesfull probably due to CD protection. (Geez.. this protection parania, am I supposed to be swaping CDs now, just to hear one song from each)?
2. Downloaded latest WinAmp (to check it out)
3. Downloaded latest MediaPlayer (to check it out)

Any ideas?

 

[Askitis]

Thanks for your suggestion.

I went ahead and uninstalled WinAmp and MediaPlayer.
The only thing left now is MusicMatch Jukebox (which was the original music App on this PC and worked fine before all this happened)

So, after uninstalling everything else, the problem is STILL there. As a matter of fact, after uninstalling M$ MediaPlayer, the CDRTC.dll became missing from the system and as it turned out AdaptecDirectCD needed to be reinstalled.

And here is the weird part:
-When playing music from the CD-ROM drive it comes out perfect.
-But, if the music is played back from file (my private collection) it is all distorted. As a matter of fact, any sound coming from the C:\ drive is distorted including the Windows default wav files.

 

[Askitis]

zpyrd wrote:
>I'm not sure but I thought Windows media player was needed to play the Windows wave files.

Yes, Windows Media player7.1 is uninstallable through ->Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.

After removing 7.1, the older version of Media Player remains in the system.